At the large US technology company, no single team controls the entire system. A feature that touches payments, identity, and platform teams requires coordination across three codebases, three on-call rotations, and three sets of priorities. Getting technical alignment across teams without creating bureaucratic overhead is an active engineering problem. ...
In the years at the European financial technology firm, the engineering organisation went through three significant restructuring events: a change in engineering leadership, a shift from functional to product-aligned teams, and a consolidation of two separate engineering groups. Each one produced the same kind of disruption and the same kind of opportunities. Org change is uncomfortable. It’s also underanalysed. Most engineers treat it as something happening to them, not something to navigate actively. ...